26 November 2012

If you thought crowd-funding to finance
translation & literature was something newish, like I did for at
least a couple of days, well, then we were both wrong together. Going
under the old term of collecting subscriptions, crowd-funding to
publish print literature by major authors went on for centuries &
at least into the 1930s.
An American committee established in 1937 to finance W.B.Yeat’s writing
raised the equivalent of $96 000 USD in today’s money (or €74 000),
which helped Yeats go on producing world class literature in the last 18
months of his life. What is new about the Toledo Translation Fund,established this year to support the translation
into English of major works in the humanities and social sciences,
from a wide range of world languages and cultures, are the dynamics
of donating.

(I was given the above photo by a friend, of this moving painting of Luxemburg painted in 1928)

And the guys running the TTF -- under the leadership of Prof. Peter Hudis -- have
chosen a more than dynamic author to translate, for the first major
work in the series. Rosa Luxemburg (1871 - 1919) -- whose Complete
Works are due to be published, thanks to the TTF, for the first
time in English by Verso, in 14 volumes from February 2013 on. Those
of you who've stuffed Rosa Luxemburg into the drawer marked
“difficult, political, avoid”, may want to take a peek at
Jacqueline Rose's fiery review in the LRB of the companion volume,
titled The Letters of
Rosa Luxemburg, review available here.

Jacqueline
Rose would like us to pull Luxemburg back out of the drawer &
stick on new labels: “must-read, audacious, lyrical”. To
get a comprehensive introduction to Rosa
Luxemburg as an historical figure, listen to this radio programme on the American college
station Against The Grain.Rosa
Luxemburg's Complete
Works should
also break down other categories inside our minds: does our
fascination with / professional work in translated fiction mean we're
somehow disinterested in translated literary non-fiction? Which of us
manage to be simultanously really into Ingo Schulze's novels but able
to blank out all his critiques of capitalism, shouting out from any
German newspaper you care to open?

Your
own answers to these questions can tell us why the TTF model could
also work for translating fiction in the future. Enough people
enthusiastic about a book or group of books, & willing to put
their credit cards where their mouths are: and then new ideas can move into new worlds. As you may have guessed
by now, I'm going to be one of the translators in the
translation-team for the Luxemburg edition, so my interest in the
Toledo Fund raising the $
11 000 / c. € 8500 it still needs -- (up to know they've already
raised $
19 000 / c.€14500) -- is not solely altruistic. And I'm going to be
enjoying the fundraising work, by sending the appeal letter (no email
for such serious matters) to famous well-off Germans who have at any
time shown an interest in that side of philosophical & political
life that Luxemburg embodies. You know the type: champagne
socialists, others we may love to hate, others still who we would
love even more if we knew more of them -- Günter Grass, Stefan Raab,
Fritz Raddaz, Charlotte Roche, Gregor Gysi, Ingo Herzke -- and a
hundred other individuals of that ilk who might wish to back the
intellectual inheritance of one of the most intriguing women in
German history. Writing to celebs & the nearly-famous in the off
chance they'll back your project isn't just childish, it has
pedigree: a good Hamburg friend got £1000
for acting school through an unsolicited letter to Anthony Hopkins.
And a very polite refusal letter fromRichard
Briers as part of the same fundraising offensive.

So,
if you're now itching to lunge for the credit card & donate online
to making quality translation happen, then ... Don't let me stop you: